Women Honored by AAF

The Amateur Athletic Foundation will honor five women today who were standout performers in sports that only recently have become open to female athletes on a large scale.

Weightlifter Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton, boxers Lucia Rijker and Lili Rodriguez, boxing referee Gwen Adair and wrestler Shannon Williams Yancey will be saluted by the foundation as part of its annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Stockton was a champion weightlifter in the 1940s who organized the first women’s weightlifting contest and operated the first all-women’s gym in the U.S. She performed weightlifting and acrobatic feats on Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach. In 2000 Stockton was elected to the International Federation of Bodybuilders Hall of Fame.

Rijker was 36-0 as a kickboxer and won four world titles. In 1998 she won the first women’s boxing shown on prime network television. She has fought as a lightweight and welterweight, and has a record of 16-0 with 14 knockouts. Her last bout was June 21, when she won a unanimous eight-round decision over junior welterweight Jane Couch.

Rodriguez was also a kickboxer and was a ranked featherweight boxer in the 1970s and ‘80s. She was one of the fighters on the first all-women boxing card in California, held July 13, 1979.

Adair has been a licensed boxing referee and judge since 1980, and a member of the California Referees Assn. for more than 17 years. She has worked more than 700 amateur and professional bouts, including two world championship title bouts and seven national championship fights. She is also an actress, having appeared in several episodes of the television show “M*A*S*H.”

Yancey, a standout wrestler, was a four-time national champion and won 13 gold medals in international competition. She is currently an assistant wrestling coach at Thousand Oaks High, the first female high school wrestling coach in state history.

--Mike Terry